Are the US and China headed for a 100-year conflict?
At the dawn of the Trump-led trade battle with China. I repeatedly asked the same question: Is this about balancing the trade deficit and tidying up IP abuse? Or is it about containing and limiting China's power?
It's something I asked in the video below. I believe it's still the most-important question.
I'm not sure what the answer is but I believe that China thinks the answer is that the US is trying to limit China. If that's the conclusion then their only option is to defend itself and/or fight back.
Finally, there's the important question of how other countries see the conflict.
Martin Wolf today writes about it today. He says the US had broad support on insisting that China abide by values of freedom, rules-based multilateralism and global co-operation. Those are also ideas that resonate within China.
However China will close ranks on a belief that the US is trying to sabotage its rise and US allies will be less likely to enter the fray, especially with Trump's poor treatment of US allies.
The tragedy in what is now happening is that the administration is simultaneously launching a conflict between the two powers, attacking its allies and destroying the institutions of the postwar US-led order. Today's attack on China is the wrong war, fought in the wrong way, on the wrong terrain. Alas, this is where we now are.
